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Top Gear Has All The Chemistry Of A Flat Battery

The cinematography in the new Top Gear is excellent, but every other element of the show is a long slog through arid conditions.

It is always a shame to discover that a once-loved brand has been mismanaged, and tarnished by poor judgement. I’m not talking about the near-unwatchable Top Gear, but host of the show Matt LeBlanc.

Surrounded by dangerously uncharismatic people, LeBlanc is always a consummate professional when hosting, but even he can’t lift an hour of tepid, awkward television by himself.

LeBlanc has great natural charisma, but you see his reluctance creeping in around the edges as he presents a program that – if it were a car tyre – would be bald and traction-less from wear. He has the rictus-grimace of a hostage, trapped by his agent’s woeful decision-making, forced to make weaksauce banter with co-hosts as charmless as Chrysler PT Cruisers.

On his own, Matt LeBlanc does a good job of introducing us to Ford’s 638bhp GT supercar. The show now feels a little obsessed with America, which is a shame because I have next to no interest in American car manufacturers beyond Tesla.

American cars have none of the style of European cars, and Americans like to drive cars in tedious looping speedways, or ridiculous drag races. V8 Muscle cars are loud, crass, and driven by people who pretend that “Vin Diesel” isn’t a silly name for someone born Mark Sinclair.

To their credit, Ford seem to have realised this, and their turbo-charged V6 super car is surprisingly attractive from the font, marred by a boxy, inelegant rear. The photography is – as usual – stunning, as LeBlanc describes the car’s features, finishing with the “Al-loo-min-um” body. “Al-loo-min-um,” he repeats, “that’s right.

It’s an American car and we’re in America.” Oh yeah, so you are. An American driving a Ford down the Pacific Coast Highway. On the wrong side of the road. Top Gear is unrecognisable these days, like those British people who head to America and develop a bizarre twang somewhere over the Atlantic.

During a long, slow commercial for the car, LeBlanc never seems to be having too much fun in a car damned by the weak praise of being “the fastest Ford ever.”

There is a rare moment of excicement on central California’s Laguna Seca track when LeBlanc engages the GT’s track mode, and the car lowers itself like a big cat readying itself for the kill. But the “raceway” segment feels perfunctory. LeBlanc keeps telling us that it’s not like any other Ford ever, like that’s such a massive achievement.

In his performance there are shades of the late, great Orson Welles slurring his way through an advert for Paul Masson’s mid-range “Californian champagne.” “What’s not to like?” demands LeBlanc, presumably echoing the increasingly-strained words of his agent holding the BBC Worldwide paycheque under his nose.

There are some nice clips on the history of the Ford GT40 at Le Mans, and then LeBlanc drives off, saying: “You know what? I’m just going to shut up now.” By the end of the piece, it feels like that’s exactly what LeBlanc wants to do, and to drive off down that Pacific Highway to bigger and better things.

For now, though, LeBlanc is back in the studio, stuck with automotive journalist and racing driver Chris Harris. Harris has the demeanour of a duty-free aftershave salesman, and a whiny, nasal delivery identical to that of TV comedian Greg Davies, but without the comic delivery.

The chat between them feels like you’re in the room for the first meeting between a father and his daughter’s boyfriend. As they flog the GT’s track mode feature to death by showing it again, the segment has the chemistry of a flat battery.

Into this mix comes presenter Rory Reid dressed from the waist up like a medical functionary in a mid-Nineties episode of Star Trek, and obligatory guest Sir Chris Hoy dressed like a dad on date night.

The problems during the forced studio chat are manifold. Harris and Reid have the energy and charisma of rotting bananas, and Sir Chris is banging on about some brutal yet tedious idea to cycle to the South Pole, having driven to the studio in his “nice family car.”

Sir Chris Hoy doesn’t really sell the cycling across Antarctica bit, and has the demeanour of someone who fears that his most impressive achievements are behind him. He may be a national treasure, but perhaps cycling in circles for a living doesn’t adequately prepare guests for matey sofa banter.

At this point in episode five I begin to wonder if I’ve been asked to review this episode of Top Gear because nobody else at GQ can bring themselves to watch it any more.

There is some respite from the tedium in the form of the funny and engaging German motor racing driver Sabine Schmitz. Schmitz is the first person who genuinely seems to enjoy what she’s doing.

“Now this is what I call a playground” she laughs as she spies the Mojave desert, home of a Californian desert race that she is competing in against fun-sponge Chris Harris. Oh God, yes. We’re back in America again. Did you miss it since we were there five minutes ago? I didn’t. Schmitz and Harris are racing in some desert race, which means the cars are silly and dangerous.

The cinematography is excellent, but I just couldn’t help thinking it would have been better if Harris had not narrated.

Watching buggies ripping through the sand dunes of the Mojave desert, smashing over rocks and tearing through desert scrub is genuinely thrilling, and undercut completely by the moany Greg Davies-esque voiceover. Then they stop, to show an electrical fire in one of these daft, bodged American vehicles, and Chris Harris is whining again at the side of a burned out buggy about how dangerous it all is.

Then LeBlanc appears, and you realise that if they’re going to save this show it should just be LeBlanc and Schmitz, going to other countries besides America. LeBlanc is joined by Eddie Jordan dressed like an accountant who’s bought himself backstage tickets to meet the Stones and has been clothed for the occasion by his daughter.

“We got bloody stuck” says Sabine while trying to drive over boulders the size of cows, but she’s chuckling. The only person, still, who actually seems to enjoy what she’s doing. Then there are some shots of Trump-supporting rednecks sitting around burning logs. All it needed was a shot of the burning crucifix and the Klan hats that must have been kept out of shot. The desert bit pauses, and we return to the studio.

Boring Rory Reid introduces a boring drone car and Chris Harris has an utterly contrived argument about the drone car which is boring. Then we go trackside where Reid introduces the Nissan Bladeglider, an electric car that looks like offspring of a reluctant lovemaking session between a woman’s razor and a mobility scooter.

Harris dismisses “all the cleverness” of electric cars. He claims that: “for me it’s a philosophical point – it’s fun.” What? Was that some ad-libbed nonsense or did someone genuinely think that made sense? To make a “philosophical point” ourselves, the dialogue is worthy of ridicule.

I admitted to genuine excitement when Sir Chris Hoy got his lap time record. “Driving the wheels off it,” Le Blanc says of his performance, although I wonder whether it really was that thrilling, or if I was just feeling sorry for Hoy.

I won’t spoil the end of the race through the desert, but it’s a good metaphor for the show: it’s a long slog through arid conditions.

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